


slow if you want to enjoy it

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Blood and Torture, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, Horror, Knifeplay, M/M, Masochism, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Hatred, Wound Fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:42:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22532677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: There are two boxes now that haunt Malcolm night after night. They sit side by side, quiescent but unavoidable in this stone room with no exit. He knows in his soul the shape of the bodies within them.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Paul Lazar | John Watkins, Paul Lazar | John Watkins & Martin Whitly
Comments: 15
Kudos: 42
Collections: Prodigal Son Kink Meme





	slow if you want to enjoy it

**Author's Note:**

> For Kate and the rest of the trash pile.

Malcolm buckles himself into his restraints and remains sitting upright in his bed for a good ten minutes after. He’s so fucking tired–each blink a gritty scrape across his eyes and the weight behind them growing unbearable. But the moment he falls asleep, he knows what will happen….

He sighs and hangs his head, drawing in a breath to hold it for a count of eight and trying to purge the fear on a slow exhale. Inhale, hold, breathe out. And again. A bit of calm enters him and he lowers his lashes, rolling his neck slowly from side to side to release more of the tension in his muscles.

It was a good day. A productive day. They made a lot of progress on their case. Dani invited him for drinks after her shift to a bar in Chelsea and he had the pleasure of meeting some of her friends. Mother didn’t check in on him even once. Maybe his dreams tonight will be different, he thinks. Hopes.

Another slow cycle of breath and Malcolm feels ready to sink back into his pillows and give sleep a try. He opens his eyes to look down at his hands and check the restraints one last time, but they aren’t there– His wrists are naked and his fingers curl around the heavy hilt of a hunting knife.

 _No._ He’s already asleep.

He scrambles backwards and hits the wall. It’s as cold and immovable behind him as the stone beneath him. The rumbling rush of the subway echoes up through the floor until it feels like his very bones are vibrating.

Knees drawn up to his chest, Malcolm presses the heel of his hand to his eye, the knife still held tight in his grip.

“Please, no,” he whispers, his hands trembling. His entire body trembling. “I want to wake up. I need to wake up. I can’t do this anymore.”

But he doesn’t wake, and the boxes are still waiting for him. There are two of them now haunting him night after night.

They sit side by side, quiescent but unavoidable in this stone room with no exit. He knows in his soul the shape of the bodies within them. The Girl in one. John Watkins in the other.

He could open them.... He could use the knife….

Martin’s voice comes to him in a whisper: _“Do it, my boy. Quick if you want to be kind._ Slow _if you want to enjoy it.”_

Malcolm’s knuckles go white around the handle of the knife. He’s sat here like this a dozen times before, pleading as Martin gets louder, more insistent. Until the whispers turn to shouts turn to breath hot and angry at his ear and a hand tight on the back of his neck.

He knows in his gut that he could plunge the blade into Watkins and go on without losing his mind entirely. But the Girl? The soft curl of her body barely breathing, as fragile and scared as he is?

It’s just a dream, and yet–

“Dad, please. I can’t do this. Don’t make me do this.”

_“I’m not making you do a thing. But you know what will happen if you don’t, Malcolm.”_

He _does_ know what will happen if he drops the knife and refuses to open the boxes. He remembers these dreams; the awful things that keep happening to him. He’ll die like he should have died twenty years ago–when he couldn’t kill Watkins the first time, and when he couldn’t save the Girl.

Malcolm looks at the knife. In the gleam of the blade he catches his own reflection. It doesn’t move in time with him, and its smile says it knows just how easy it will be for Malcolm to push that knife into unresisting flesh.

 _”A little stabby stabby,”_ it says with the shape of his mouth, _”and we can stop fighting ourself every night. Imagine the possibilities: six maybe seven hours of sleep. And Dad will be so proud of us.”_

Malcolm groans miserably and stares pleadingly at the ceiling. What if he does it and he doesn’t wake up? What if he’s trapped here forever in this room with proof of what he’s capable of rotting slowly in front of him.

What if Martin comes for him anyway?

He staggers to his feet and lets the blade tumble from his fingers.

The latches on both boxes unlock as the knife clatters to the floor.

The lid to Watkins’ trunk flings open, and the curve of his back appears before he rises up, cracking his neck before he steps one foot over the edge of the box like he’s emerging refreshed from a warm bath.

Malcolm screws his eyes shut and hugs his arms around himself, but he knows the script: Watkins will be hefting the axe up over his shoulder and waiting with preternatural calm…. Waiting for the push of lifeless fingers to curl over the lip of the other box and for the Girl to crawl out, the ashy grey of her dead skin almost the same color of the stone.

“It’s just a dream. It’s a dream. It feels real, but it isn’t real,” Malcolm repeats under his breath in a whisper that gets more and more frantic. The pins and needles in his extremities creep into his limbs and the sourness in his stomach rises to sting the back of his throat.

Eventually he can’t take it anymore and opens his eyes.

The Girl is spilling out of her box onto the floor, pulling herself forward with bloodied fingertips.

Watkins hasn’t moved, one leg stood in his prison like Malcolm still has a chance to bend down and grab the knife. But fighting back now isn’t what the dream wants from him. _What Martin wants from him._ Stabbing Watkins now won’t wake Malcolm up. He’ll still end up...hurt.

Watkins finger combs his beard and his gaze takes a leisurely path down Malcolm’s body until settling on the knife waiting at Malcolm’s bare feet.

“Looks like you dropped something,” Watkins drawls lazily.

“It feels real, but it isn’t real,” Malcolm tells himself. His heart thunders in his chest and he presses his back harder against the wall, praying that it will absorb him in and seal up around him to keep him safe. For the briefest of moments it feels like it might give, shift back into the softness of his sheets and let him wake.

But then the axe is sliding off Watkins’s shoulder and he casually flips it around to point the bloodied head of it at the fallen knife. “You just going to leave that there? A good blade deserves to be treated with respect, little Malcolm. You know that.”

“You’re a manifestation of my fears. You have no power over me.”

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” Watkins says as he steps fully out of the box. He slides the haft of the axe through his hand, the smooth wood whispering across his palm. “Now if you’re not going to pick up that knife, you know who will.”

With an anguished cry Malcolm goes up on his toes.  
The Girl can move so fast. The lid of her box snaps shut the minute her feet slip out and drop to the floor and the skitter of her rushing towards him sounds like insects gathering to swarm. Her lank hair drags against his toes as she grabs the knife and rises, holding it before her between both hands. “You didn’t find me,” she says.

Something dark and wriggling falls out of her mouth as the blade quivers in her grasp.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her.

The air leaking out of his throat isn’t so easily replaced, and Malcolm struggles to fill his lungs before Watkins reaches for him.

He doesn’t resist, not anymore. Like most any grappling throw, it’s safer and easier to go with the motion than against it, and Malcolm lets Watkins’ hand find his throat and flows with it. The slam of his skull against the wall doesn’t hurt, not like a real blow to the head, but the rush as he’s pulled away and shoved down and left in a spill of limbs on the floor–that feels all too real.

Malcolm presses his palms to the stone and flips himself over before Watkins’ boot finds his ribs. Always the same tender places that had taken so long to heal after their encounter in the tunnel and of course, the place where his body wears a scar now, puckered and raw.

“You were supposed to find me,” the Girl wails. She drives the knife into the meat of his thigh, leaves it quivering there as she clamps her hands down on his wrists and pulls.

“I know. I’m still trying.”

He’s a dead weight now, impossibly heavy, and it’ll take hours for her to drag him back to her box with her.

It leaves so much time for Watkins to work.

“You’re always trying, Malcolm, and yet you’re always failing,” Watkins says. He drops into a crouch at Malcolm’s side and rests the head of the axe flat against Malcolm’s belly. It slides up to catch beneath a button and the thread severs without the slightest resistance. Metal kisses his skin. “You lack conviction. God is punishing you for turning your face away from your maker. Your savior. The one man who is fit to lead to you absolution.”

“You have no power over me,” Malcolm rasps as his shirt peels away to bare his chest.

The tug at his wrists is inconsistent, sometimes a hard jerk that moves him half an inch towards the box waiting to swallow him alive. It’s not even the Girl, he tries to tell himself. It’s an echo of his own body fighting against the restraints in the real world.

But if that’s true. What does it mean that he’s been getting hard now when it gets to this part of his dream…? The part with the knife.

When he’s transfixed and staring and still so very, very afraid as John Watkins rises up and tosses aside the axe and gives himself a squeeze through his pants. Watkins’s cock is an unmistakable outline, and Malcolm’s is too, thickening to tent the front of his slacks.

Is he hard in his bed? Is he going to wake wet with his own come after what Watkins is going to do to him? Does he believe, deep down, that he deserves this much suffering? Malcolm groans and tries to kick out, but it’s like moving his legs through syrup.

“You could be out there, saving people like I was, and instead you’re drowning in your own sins,” Watkins sneers, rubbing himself through his pants as he gives the blade lodged in Malcolm’s thigh a nudge with the point of his boot.

He screams as the knife digs deeper into his muscle, or he tries to. His jaw cracks wide but there’s no sound except the Girl’s sudden broken screeching, as if what’s left of his voice is spilling out past her cracked lips.

Watkins falls back into a crouch and yanks the knife out of him, wiping the blade off on Malcolm’s cheek in a wet red kiss to dry on his skin. Roughly Watkins tugs at Malcolm’s pants, undoing the clasp and the button, ripping the zipper open and then hauling them down to his thighs.

Malcolm’s stomach curls in, belly quivering when Watkins pushes the blade under the leg of his shorts. “Please, no,” he says as the hot slip of tears leak from the corners of his eyes. The sound of fabric ripping makes the whole of his body jerk and he can’t twist away, can’t do anything beyond lay there as Watkins’ hand slides over the wing of his hip, covetous and clutching.

He presses his thighs together as tight as he can instinctively and Watkins laughs.

“You filthy cockslut. You think I’m going to use that dirty hole between your legs?”

The point of the knife drags over the scar at his side–seven stitches–and down, curving towards the dip of his navel.

“No, little Malcolm, I’m going to make you a brand new hole. Something unsullied by all those disgusting sinners you’ve lain with.”

Malcolm groans, a cascade of useless begging spilling from his mouth as the Girl’s hard fingers claw into the back of his wrists, her nails breaking flesh and digging into the space between the bones of his arm. Crucifixion happened at the wrists, he knows. Martin had never been a religious man, but he had lessons there too.

Maybe he’d studied them for John.

The slip of the knife into Malcolm’s belly is as clean as a scalpel, parting his skin like tissue paper. Watkins’ doesn’t gut him like a deer, doesn’t aim to slice through his muscle but above it. The blade slides beneath layers of subcutaneous fat and fascia, freeing it from Malcolm’s abdominal wall. His nerves catch up with the pain as the blade pulls free and Malcolm is left with a rivulet of blood trickling warm from the wound.

“Look at that. Your dad was a great man. A great teacher,” Watkins says, examining his own handiwork. He leaves the knife on the floor in favor of tracing the cut with his fingertips, pressing down at the edges to make the hurt flare up white hot and burning and pull more blood to the surface, dark and rich. He slicks his palm over the wound to smear a trail across Malcolm’s skin.

“He wouldn’t want you to hurt me,” Malcolm says weakly, fevered now. Watkins’ touch on his skin is slow and measured, drifting across his body to map out old bruises that only live in Malcolm’s memory.

The edge of Watkins’ thumbnail toys with his nipple until it’s tight and peaked, sending an electric jolt down his spine before his body remembers the cut gaping at his belly. Malcolm groans and the dull throbbing hurt of it spreads to consume him again as Watkins’ knuckles drift down almost tenderly to trace the wound again. 

“Maybe not now, but on that camping trip? Oh, he was going to let me have all the fun I wanted with you.”

Malcolm feels his blood surge, a fresh wave of wetness leaking down his side as his cock betrays him and gets harder, his body begging for Watkins to touch him there instead. How can part of him still want this when everything hurts so much?

There’s a sound, a jangle of a belt coming loose. Malcolm’s back scrapes across the floor another tortuous inch. His fingers shake harder and harder as the Girl’s hands claw deeper into his arms. If she doesn’t pull him into the box, she’s going to climb right inside him and live with him forever; she’ll crush his bones and rearrange them until he can’t look into the mirror without seeing the shape of her trapped beneath his skin.

But for now, all he can see is Watkins dropping over him and straddling his thighs. Watkins’ cock is out, and Malcolm screams before it even touches the wet edge of the cut on his belly. He can already feel it, the push into the wound, the way it distorts his flesh and rips the cut wider. It makes it worse when it finally does happen: the endless searing hurt of Watkins cock nudging its way under his skin and into his abdomen, the press of Watkins’ body against where he’s still hard despite everything.

“Oh, Malcolm, do you see it now?” Watkins asks him. Watkins’ tongue is curled against his lip, blissful– _enraptured_ –as he fucks slowly into the space he’s carved out for himself. His hands flatten out to frame where he’s buried inside Malcolm. “Do you see what you’re made for?”

If Malcolm looks down, he’ll see the outline of Watkins’ cock bulging beneath his skin, the slick red mess of his blood shining along the shaft as Watkins pulls out and thrusts in again. This obscene promise to himself that he is built to be hurt, to be used in any number of unnatural ways and left broken and weeping.

If he looks up, it’ll be the Girl, her ashen face staring back at him, rippling between fury and pain, choking on soil and crawling things. Endlessly begging for him to make this stop because she’s trapped here too, with him. With _them_.

Because if he looks anywhere else, eventually his father will appear, stepping out of the shadows in a cherry red sweater with a plastic smile. He won’t offer Malcolm aid, or advice, or consolation, not now–not once Watkins has him. Martin will stand there and silently observe the ruin that his son has become, turning away only when Watkins is gasping and spilling in the wound made under his skin, leaving Malcolm to bleed and burn with the stinging proof that they aren’t the same after all.

And for all the raw ugly pain of being fucked like this, of the slow dislocation of his arms, it’s the last lingering hurt that will stay with him when he wakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Read more of my [Prodigal Son fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Prodigal+Son+%28TV+2019%29&user_id=ponderosa121), or talk to me about this twink getting wrecked on Twitter [@ponderosa121](https://twitter.com/ponderosa121) or on Discord in [Prodigal Son Trash](https://discord.gg/fQaRgBD).


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